People experiencing homelessness in Red Deer now at least 766, more than double 2022 figures

About 62 per cent identified as men, 37 per cent as women, and 0.4 per cent as non-binary. Five per cent identified as veterans.

Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston says the new numbers, while tragic, aren’t surprising when you consider the number of encampments that exist, the long wait list for supportive housing, and simply looking at what agencies are dealing with.

“What we have is a housing issue that is complicated and layered in mental health, in addiction, in poverty, in interprovincial migration, in immigration, and all of those factors have come to bear on some of the numbers we have,” he said during a recent interview with the Everything Red Deer Podcast.

“If we have failed as a country, is it that we have not coherently addressed the issue of housing.”

Johnston is optimistic that 2025 will bear good news for Red Deer on the housing front, and he remains confident that a permanent emergency shelter will be constructed somewhere.

It was in 2019 that $7 million was announced for such a facility, first by the NDP, then by the UCP who replaced them. But nearly six years on, there’s still no permanent shelter, the current emergency one is at capacity, and numbers are through the roof.

“It was never the intention to build a shelter that would hold 400, 500, 600, or 700 people. In saying that, we have been asking the province for their own vision of a shelter so that we can go to the community [with it],” he says.

The City of Red Deer and Red Deer Housing each have applications before the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) — for approximately $30 million and $16 million, respectively, the mayor points out.

Other mid-sized cities have been successful with CMHC applications, ranging from $10.4 million to $24.8 million, notes Jodi Kelloway, the city’s social wellness and integration coordinator.

She shares that the local vacancy rate for rentals is less than one per cent, which is very similar to Vancouver, and lower than both Calgary and Edmonton.

“That is having a huge effect on the numbers; without being able to access that housing, it impacts the length of time someone is experiencing homelessness,” she says. “That also means an increase in chronic homelessness, which speaks to the increase in complexity [of the overall situation].”

Chronic homelessness is defined as: When a person is currently experiencing homelessness and meets one of the following criteria: a) has a total of at least six months (180 days) of homelessness in the past year; b) has recurrent experiences of homelessness over the past three years, with a cumulative duration of at least 18 months (564 days).

The preliminary report puts chronic homelessness at 83.7 per cent, up from 72.4 per cent in 2022. In 2014, it was just 35.4 per cent.

It was 2019, Kelloway notes, that the city’s then 10-year plan to end homelessness concluded. A new five-year community housing and homelessness integration plan was then created.

Now, a housing and homelessness integration committee has been struck, and conversations are being had around the plan’s next iteration.

“We are in unprecedented times, and we know there hasn’t been much investment, until recently, into affordable housing in Alberta or across Canada. There are huge gaps,” she says.

“Pair that with the low vacancy rate, and we have a system that depends very highly on market rental availability. Without capital, it’s hard to make substantial change.”

Asked if the city and council could have, at any point, done something differently to tackle homelessness and housing, Mayor Johnston’s belief is that they’ve acted in a good way to this point in the journey.

“For 2025, we’ll see some break-throughs, at least that’s my fervent prayer — and that we’ll get some action out of CMHC,” he says.

“As it relates to the shelter, I never expected to hit the wall so many times with this project. I think we took a very methodical and well-thought out approach, and we were public.”

Johnston expects the results from an Expression of Interest initiated by the province, related to the Red Deer shelter project, to be released soon.

—

READ MORE

—

Johnston also praised the agencies in the community who are doing bulk of the legwork on this issue, some of whom include Safe Harbour Society, McMan, Red Deer Native Friendship Society, and Shining Mountains.

In early 2025, the city will release an expanded summary of the 2024 PiT count.

The preliminary report can be seen below:

by Josh Hall | @Vancan19

People experiencing homelessness in Red Deer now at least 766, more than double 2022 figures

What's Trending